Not on the list but Kimi's contract with Lotus is still the weirdest one for me. I still cant belive that someone at Lotus legal team thought that it was a good idea and wouldn't backfire or anything. (For those that dont know Lotus offered Kimi a 50000 dollar bonus for every point that he scored. Well 2 years later he had scored 390 points and earned almost 20 milloin dollars almost bankrupting Lotus)

Everyone else: Fights for contracts. Kimi: Gets paid by Ferrari to stay home...

Bruh, Kimi's career is honestly the best. Stay fighting at the top for 90% of your career without any pressure.

My favorite F1 contract story is not about a driver but about an engineer: (at least this is a story that i have heard a couple of times, i have no sources to back it up and am not 100% certain this actually happened, but it seems too good not to share) Gustav Brunner was technical director at Minardi in 2001, and was offered the same position at Toyota for 2002. The salary Toyota offered was higher than what he got at Minardi, but Brunner felt that given Toyota's mighty budget and the much higher responsibilities that came with that, he should be paid a lot more than that initial offer. So he negotiated for a considerably larger number. While Toyota raised their offer quite a lot, they simply were not willing to match the number Brunner felt to be acceptable, so he almost walked away from that deal. Only after several weeks of negotiations Brunner realized that while he assumed they had been talking about annual salary, Toyota was actually talking about monthly salary. So all the numbers were actually 12 times as much as he had assumed. Even the first offer was higher than what Brunner really was asking for, and by now he had raised his price a lot higher than that. He took the job and became one of the best paid non-driver personalities in F1 at the time.

Being too French is a valid argument not to want to do something.

The best story I've heard was the story of Roberto Moreno getting the Benetton drive in late 1990. He went to the Benetton factory to do them a favor (sit in the mock-up of the 1991 car to help with seating position), hoping to use his time there to beg them for a test drive in 1991. When he got there, the team immediately offered him a race seat for the last 2 races of 1990, since one of the team's drivers had just gotten injured in a helicopter crash! When Moreno called his existing team EuroBrun to get out of his contract, EuroBrun told him the team had folded that morning! Moreno promptly finished P2 in his first race with Benetton, and they then signed him for 1991.

Kimi was paid to stay home.... That's what we need for people still working

Let's be honest, Sauber signed like 20 drivers for the 2015 season, I think at one point I was linked to one of the seats and I've never even been to Europe

Fun fact, Bianchi and Sutil also had contract to drive Sauber in 2015

And another: Michael Schumacher leaving Ferrari. Common assumption is that Raikkonen replaced Schumacher; however for those of us who properly remember, Raikkonen was signed to partner Schumacher, as a Di Montezemolo power play to move the team's focus away from the Todt-Schumacher axis, and give him more control. Schumacher then understod that Massa was not to be retained, and; rather than race alongside Raikkonen as a competitor, and see his friend Felipe booted out, he chose retirement - even specifically stating it at Monza: "In terms of timing, the decision I thought it was fair to find a moment that Felipe has a chance to decide his future because I think he is a very great guy. He has been doing a very good job for the team, very supportive, a really great teammate. “There is a moment for him to decide his future and there is no point for me to take my decision any later than his decision had to be taken." Massa was later signed to a 1-year extension for 2007.

Ferrari : Kimi, you'll be paid to stay home Kimi : OK, but will i have the drink ?

“Who is this Edward Irvine?” That made me pinch the upper part of my nose.

If Damon Hill only knew how good the 1998 Adrian Newey designed McLaren was. Might have provided him another world title..

I find it ironic that Michael Schumacher was so livid about Jordan putting team orders on his brother, considering Michael spent much of his career benefiting from team orders. 🤔🖕🏼

Senna always wanted to have the best car. That's why he changed teams to Williams. In 1993 McLaren was thinking about to use Lamborghini engines. There was even a white mule car with extended chassis to fit that engine. That performed so well that Senna tought he would even be able to go up against Williams that year. The Lamborghini engine provided McLaren with about 70 more hp, was more stable, and easier on the tires. Reliability of the McLambo was a bit of a thing. The engines tended to blow up in a spectacular way! Never the less Senna wanted to race that car in Japan. Possibly knowing that he would not finish. But he wanted to leave Prost in the dust while his car was working. But Ron Dennis chose to stay with Ford for the remainder of the '93 season. So Senna leaving the team was partially because of the inferior Ford Cosworth engine and knowing to late that Peugeot would be the next works engine supplier. In between there was no faith in that McLaren would be able to fight for the Championship. In the end "car wise" he made a good decision. McLaren wasn't able to compete until 1998 with Mercedes engines. We all know where it unforunately ended as the '94 Williams was such a handful to drive.

Wish I had a brother like Michael.

Hamilton in 2012 was offered a really low amount like 5m iirc from Ron saying its the best he can get if he wants to continue winning. Then Merc offered 25m? Then Ron countered with 30m but Hamiltons mind was already made up.

Kimi got a double-figures sum to stay at home in 2010. Massa had a lower salary than that sum. With Lotus, Kimi had a base salary + bonuses related to points. It seems that Lotus didn't expect Kimi to score so many points in 2012 and this is one of the reasons why they weren't able to pay him. I wonder if he ever got that money back.

There's another Ayrton Senna contract story with McLaren/Williams back in 1990. While he was negotiating McLaren's contract for 1991-1992 he spoke wit Frank Williams also. Frank wanted to sign Ayrton so much he said to his 2nd choice Mansell to wait when Senna give him a final word. At the end of the day Frank found out Senna used their deal as a bargain to get more money from McLaren and he signed with Nige.

The idea that Senna felt he was missing out on a McLaren-Peugeot is both funny and tragic.

How is Kimi's contract with Lotus not in here? That's a crazy story.

2:35 They only signed Jenson after Kimi decided not to go to Mclaren

3 drivers at Sauber actually were 5 (maybe 6) drivers at Sauber: Ericcsson Nasr Van der Garde Sutil (who was in a similar position as VDG but didn't sue them) Bianchi (who signed the contract before Japan 2014) Gutierrez (even tho I'm not sure if he actually already had a contract or if they just told him he's fired very late in 2014)

My addition to the list: Carlos signing to Ferrari thinking he has a chance at winning the championship only to find out he will actually be a backmarker 😭

'' Button to Williams ''. Three words, so many speculations. Also, Senna was quite a diva.

Ralf wasn't faster than Hill in Belgium. It was only because of the safety car that Ralf had any chance. There was a huge gap before the safety car came out between Hill and R Schumacher. Hill took it steady because he knew Ralf wouldn't pass him with team orders put in place. If there were no team orders, I would expect Hill to pull away like he did with ease throughout the previous parts in the race. He was more worried about Ralf trying something stupid to get his first win when the safety came in

I remember some publication at the time when Alesi was on the market the reporter wrote, and I’m paraphrasing because it’s 30 years ago “Basically any team that put a contract in front of Alesi, he signed it.”

You gotta feel bad for Van Der Garde He properly got messed around when he was in F1

Michael Schumacher getting upset over team orders lol

One quick thing about Sauber in 2015: FIVE drivers were contracted, not 3. Nasr, Ericsson, van der Garde, Sutil (who never got his money back) and Bianchi (we sadly know how that went). Giedo also didn't "agree" not to have Sauber's assets seized - iirc he was literally threatened by Bernie.

The Button story goes back further to 2001, not sure of the details, but it involved Williams and Benetton/Renault

I would add one more Nakajima's contract with Lotus. He, being a Honda factory driver was imposed to Williams to replace Mansell to keep the Honda Turbo engines in 88 and regular aspirated Honda engines in 89 and so on. So Williams declined that and then Honda being already signed with Lotus, went to McLaren with their brilliant engines at the beggining of 88 which made Williams have no more option than buy Judd V8 aspirated engines and cole from top to bottom That is relevant while that engine would not been gone to McLaren. Yet also makes sense in the 1992 Honds leaving F1 and Senna and McLaren getting issues founding an engine to compete with. They tried hard to repeat the move and get Renault engines but that time it did not ever worked.

I'm continually impressed by The Race. It's great that despite having closely followed the sport for years, I am still learning of events I was previously unaware of. Great work.

You forgot to mention the everlasting Senna-Ferrari affair, which even involved the Brazilian signing a pre-contractwith FIAT management in 1990 for the following Season save for being vetoed by both Prost and then-team boss Cesare Fiorio.

About Senna: Cesare Fiorio claimed that in 1990 he and Ayrton met in Sao Paulo during the racing weekend and later in Monaco to draft a contract for 1991. Fiorio claimed that everything was in place but he was sabotaged by Ferrari's president, who at the time was a man controlled by Fiat and didn't like him. So he used the negotiations to take out Fiorio, by telling Prost everything. The Fiat man (Pietro Fusaro) recently said that Prost bypassed any middlemen and asked to meet none other than Gianni Agnelli in Torino at Fiat HQ. After that meeting, Prost told Fusaro that he would race for Ferrari in 91. The stories from Fiorio and Fusaro are a bit different, but the common trait is that a contract for Senna to race for Ferrari in 91 actually existed, the only thing to do was sign. But in the end the top management of Fiat blocked the whole thing. Fiorio said that he still has the contract in his desk and that he would show it in a book he would publish. He said this in 2010 but, as of today, I don't know anything about such book.

The 1998 - 1999 look of the cars were absolutely perfect

If you go back to Chris Amon's career you'll see he often went to teams just as they had down-turns, or the team he'd just left had finally gotten it right. He's generally regarded as the best driver never to win an F1 race.

The thing with Kimi's Mclaren negotioations was not only that Button became available, they were ONLY looking to sign Button after the negoiations with Kimi failed. Essentially the exit sum money Ferrari offered for Kimi for NOT driving was bigger than the money Mclaren was willing to offer for him. Had Kimi gone to Mclaren, he would not have gotten that exit money from Ferrari (or rather Santander, the Spanish Bank behind Alonso), so Kimi used that opportunity to take break from F1 and try WRC that he had always wanted to drive more. Also Kimi really was fed up with all the politics in F1, one part of which was Santander buying him out of Ferrari. had that not happened, Kimi would have atleast followed his contract to the end with Ferrari for 2010.

I had to watch this video two times. So many information in so little time,not like others. Thanx!

Michael really take a good care of Ralf. Never knew that.

I'd say John Surtees' Lotus deal is a pretty huge crazy deal.. After just one race, Colin Chapman offered Surtees a race seat in the F1 team for 1960, however on hearing that it meant replacing Innes Ireland (who would have needed to be sacked), Surtees declined, and chose to race with Lola instead. A year on, Ireland won Team Lotus' first F1 victory, but was sacked anyway, in favour of the team fully supporting Jim Clark. Surtees never did end up racing for Lotus.

Obviously michael was angry about ralf not winning with jordan cause he had beef with hill

Another interesting story is the contact that Senna signed with Ferrari, but due to the fact that Porst was against it, the FIAT CEO Vittorio Ghidella gave the order not to sign it by Ferrari. And of the story, then Prost left, but Senna was no more among us.

Thanks for the upload 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

1:48 today we don't use contracts but James

Hi and thanks for this great to see Jordan first team I supported when seriously getting in to F1, miss Michael, love JB summed up Senna perfectly, enjoyed this little memory lane 😀

The thing about Ralf and Jordan is if you watch the Belgium GP the commentators, Murray and Brundle talk about ongoing arbitration between Williams and Jordan so Ralf can be Williams driver in 99. I think with the passing of time it's been overlooked as The Michael buying out the contract story is better.

Awesome video thank you!!

i prefer the raikkonen/ferrari saga in 07 since it envolved schumacher being pushed out and a lot of sory that hasn't been told, also the rumor deal of valentino rossi and ferrari in 07-08

You forgot (or maybe not) the contract Senna was meant to sign with Ferrari on the very next day after the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Yeah, that tops all the cases on this list by (very) far!

That last thing mentioned about Senna's contract stories, about the Senna having doubts about his move to Williams in 1994 probably explains something he was asked in the post race press conference at Adelaide in 1993, recalled in the documentary "Senna". When he was asked what Ron Dennis said to him upon climbing out of the car after the race, Senna said that Dennis told him, "it's never too late to change your mind,"

Vettel and his “performance clause” at Red Bull

David Coulthard being forced to race for Williams in 1995 is a big miss! He wasn't offered a full-time deal with Williams (after Mansell's return at the end of 1994, Rothmans wanted Mansell in the car full-time) and so signed with McLaren for 1995. Williams then decided to pick up the option that had with Coulthard, which overrode his McLaren contract. Coulthard refused to acknowledge that Williams had the right to pick up the option, so Williams took the contracts to the CRB, who ruled in their favour, keeping Coulthard at Williams for a year; before moving to McLaren for 1996.

The Button thing was hilarious. Stayed at BAR for 05 and the car was illegal, with Williams horrible too. Then he got to experience the awful 2007 Honda. It worked out in 2009 for him thankfully.

I bet Ron Dennis used loaded coin for that flip

Im surprise not many people are mentioning Alain Prost. After 1989 he wanted a contract where he would like to race alongside anyone except for Ayrton Senna because of what happened in Suzuka

Not sure if it is true, but I remember hearing one of Nelson Piquet's contracts stated he would on;y get paid based on points won. Something similar was mentioned in the video where points augmented his base salary. Side note: it seems Williams loses a lot of drivers right after they win the championship. Piquet, Mansell, Prost all transitioned away after winning.

The one thing between Senna and McLaren (Dennis) I always found interesting was the whole Indy/Lamborghini thing before the '93 season kicked off.

Good video . How about the little known Michael Schumacher to Toyota in 2005 story contract ?

Michael getting upset on his brother's behalf because of team orders must be the most ironic thing ever considering Barrichello played second fiddle to him at Ferrari

The main thing I learned from this is that Eddie Jordan must have one HELL of a poker face.

01:04 So, you are going to mention "trickery" but not explain the story behind that? W T F

Fun fact: after the negotiations with Kimi and McLaren failed, the latters wanted to have Barrichello as the 2nd driver of the team in a long-term deal (imagine Rubens winning a race in 2010). But Rubens already signed with Williams and he was feeling guilty of leaving them, so McLaren asked Button, thinking it was impossible for him to leave Brawn/Mercedes, yet Button was leaving because he thought the Merc wasn't gonna be competitive in 2010 (and they hired Rosberg, who was leaving Williams for another german, Hulkenberg) Then Williams repaid back Barrichello's loyalty by sacking him for Bruno Senna's money

senna's 1994 move to williams reads like a shakespearean tragedy. Had he been a bit more patient, he'd have stayed with mclaren, and probably been alive today. Alas, we don't know ayrton's rationale, and what's done is done. Still sad nonetheless

10:07 That fact this photo exists makes me so happy.

jaguar and lucky strike livery are 🔥🔥🔥🔥 af

Now if you want BS contract disputes, what Andrea Moda did to Perry McCarthy in order to get him to leave was near manslaughter.

Kimi also did some stock car / nascar

1:52 Cursed Image

Wow, I had no idea how that went down with Ralph. That's pretty crazy stuff.

Do one on Engine contracts :)

To be fair to Senna he didn't really do anything to get that suspension from Toleman. He was planning on using the perfectly valid $100,000 buyout clause with Toleman to move to Lotus but Lotus prematurely announced the acquisition before he had fully been able to activate that clause. So they suspended him out of spite, even though it was Lotus who jumped the gun. Senna was otherwise within his contract terms.

For me Alonso's return to McLaren Honda in 2015 is the craziest and the most ridiculous F1 contract story.

Great video !! Full of really interesting fun facts - along with some rather poignant points along the way too. Thanx for compiling this vid for us diehard F1 pundits/fans/hopeless addicts, etc.... Well worth a watch - and for showing your mates too of course !! Cheers bfn. Rxxx

Anyone else remember in 2015 when Bottas was constantly linked with Ferrari?

Ferrari had a few Covid10-incidents, so they paid Kimi to stay home, so he would stay healthy to sign in a contract a few years later.

Best contract story: Big Brother helping Little Brother get into a better team! Michael’s extraordinary care for his brother Ralph is pure gold.

If senna stayed at mclaren for 94 who knows maybe he would be alive to this day?

those early 90s cars look soooo good

Ayrton Senna in number 1, as it should always be.

Eddie ''the snake'' Jordan had a lot of money out of Schumacher over time....all from that 1 race! The buyout meant he'd receive a small percentage of Schumachers earnings during his time in F1, but due to the vast amount of Schumacher earned, he did rather well out of it.

To think if senna had stayed at McLaren for 94 he might still be here now.

Couldn't be the case that Raikkonen was screwed by Mercedes in 2010 and not by McLaren? I mean, Mercedes made his comeback to F1 and got rid of both Brawn GP drivers (Button and Barrichello), which made way for McLaren to sign Button

It’s unfortunate that the factory manufacturer Toyota, BMW, Honda, and Jaguar teams never got to shine.

Raikkonen always has great contracts to choose until 2019...

Didn't know Michael was fighting for his brother like that. That's my favorite story.

Had Senna known that McLaren would be using Peugeot engines, he wouldn't have switched to Williams and he wouldn't have died.

1:30 That "someone" was Bobby Rahal

When Jose Maria Lopez signed for USF1 before they decided not to exist

So where are we putting Ocsar Piastri's story with Alpine on this list?

Better add Daniel Ricciardo, Oscar Piastri, Alpine and McLaren to this video. What a shitfight

Giede van der Garde becoming Giedo Bantergarde was quite awesome

Button didn’t pay his way out of the Williams contract. BAR/Honda did it for him and it was a hefty sum. Lucky he did stay with BAR/Honda otherwise he wouldn’t be 2009 WDC with Brawn GP.

I'm pretty sure this is right, at the time Kimi Raikkonen was paid not to drive I think he was the highest paid driver that season.

Amazing 👍

Poor Damon, shafted out of his Williams drive in '97, then turns down that $1M per win deal for '98 from what became the championship winning team :(

Wrong data about Piquet salary in Lotus. He was paid around 6.5 mil dollars. Biggest contract at the time. No additional terms. He was paid by points earned in Benneton in 1990.

Who is this Edmond Irvine we are paying millions of dollars to ? LOLZ

I've lately been curious about whether Michael tried to get Ralf to Ferrari, or how much he followed his brother's career (they always seemed a bit awkward together, but of course that doesn't mean anything when the cameras are rolling). Turns out instead he was trying to get him to a rival team ... interesting.

That isn’t even my favorite Kimi contract story, when he was with lotus they didn’t think their car would be any good so they had a bonus for every point scored, turns out their car was good enough for him to get regular podiums and almost bankrupt the team